Flare (30 page)

“Daddy!”  Melody shrieked, “I knew it was you!”

She turned to the man holding her as best she could with her neck in his grip.

“See?  I told you he’d come for me and now he’s going to kill you like you killed Nana”.

I took all this in as I ran, head lowered to charge the men and tear them apart.

The men had different ideas, however, the one by the Landrover quickly stepping behind it to use it as cover while the other
lifted Melody bodily off her saddle with one hand, while a large kitchen knife appeared in the other and was placed with the blade under her chin.

“Steady now mate”, he called out, “unless you want Melody kebab”.

The world stopped moving, or I did, I wasn’t sure.  My anger turned to sick fear as Melody kicked once, then stopped as the blade was pressed hard into her soft skin.

“Hey, put her down, we’ll give you anything you want”, I said, keeping my eyes locked on Melody’s.  “It’s ok baby, don’t worry, I’m going to fix everything”.

The look of hope on her face made me sick.  Somehow, even with a knife at her throat and me with no cards to play, she believed that I would make everything ok.

The man holding her looked at his friend.

“What if we want to keep the girl?”

I shook my head.  “Not going to happen.  I’d rather we both die than you take her anywhere”.

He glanced at his friend again and shrugged. 

“What about the car?”

“You can have it”.

“Where’s the keys?”

“My friend has them”.

“Well call him out then.  Don’t want no surprises”.

I looked back to see Emily in the shadows of the hallway, pistol in hand but unsure what to do.

“It’s ok Emily, come out”, I called, and she tucked the pistol behind her leg but kept it in her hand.  As she walked out into the sunlight both the men whistled.

“Tell you what, we’ll take her and the car for the kid”.

I shook my head.  “No, our deal is for the car.  And besides, if you took her with you you’d be dead before you got half a mile”.

“What a way to die though!”

“Please, just put Melody down, you’re hurting her”.

Her captor started to comply, and as soon as her feet touched the ground Emily snapped the pistol up, drawing a bead on his forehead.

Before she could fire, however, he saw the movement and jerked Melody off her feet.  She gave out a strangled squeal as he dangled her in front of his face.

I took a step forward before I could stop myself, almost crossing into Emily line of fire.

“Easy now”, he said, “how about we take the gun and the car, eh?”

I ignored him, tearing my eyes away from Melody long enough to look at Emily.

“I need the keys”.

She dug into her pocket with her free hand and held them out to me.  I took them and turned back to the men, the second one now crouched behind the Landrover, only his eyes visible through the window.

“
I throw you the keys”, I said, “and you give us Melody”.

“Yeah right.  I let the girl go and she shoots us.  I’m not fucking stupid”.

“Fine.  I give you the keys, your friend there starts it up and once he’s behind the wheel you can get in, but Melody stays outside.  You try and move her an inch into the vehicle and my friend here will shoot both of you and damn the consequences.  That’s my final offer.  Anything else and whatever else happens today, you both die”.

I let some of the anger bleed into my voice.  It must have been enough, as the men didn’t even look at each other.

“Fine.  Throw us the keys”.

I did, watching as they landed next to the rear wheel.  The second man scooped them up and jumped in, starting the engine almost immediately.  He leaned over and opened the passenger door, while the man holding Melody edged closer, then used the door as a shield while he climbed into the vehicle.

For one horrible second I thought they were going to try and escape with Melody, but then I saw her dirty white trainers hit the road and the Landrover shot off like a cork out of a bottle, barely slowing as it pulled a U-turn and disappeared out of the close.

I only saw this out of the corner of my eye as I ran for Melody, scooping her up from the road and lifting her chin to check that she was ok.

Up close she stank, her face crusted with dirt and dried food but I didn’t care as I crushed her to my chest and rocked her back and forth, tears streaming down my face once again.

“Oh my baby, my baby, I thought I’d lost you”, I said through the tears, her head tucked under my chin.  “I’m sorry it took me so long, I’m so, so sorry”.

She hugged me back, tears of her own cutting tracks through the filth as she pulled away to look up at me.

“They’re all gone”, she said, “mum, nana, grandpops.  They’re all gone and I don’t know where they are”.

“It’s ok baby”, I said softly, my arms tightening to pull her back to my chest.  “I promise you I’ll never leave you alone again.  I promise”.

I turned to look at Emily, who still stood with pistol in hand, held awkwardly now as she watched us with an unreadable expression on her face.

“It’s going to be ok”, I called to her, wondering why she wasn’t as happy as I was, “it’s all going to be ok”.

She shrugged and put the pistol away, then came closer and put a hand on my shoulder.

“I’m really glad that Melody is safe”, she said quietly, “and she’s worth a thousand Landrovers, but how in hell are we going to get back home without a car?”

I shrugged helplessly, just glad that my little girl was in my arms and unable to think any further ahead than that.

Then the rain began to fall.

Chapter
48

We ran for the house, no words needed as the threat that the rain carried with it soaked us to the skin in the time it took us to travel down the path and through the front door.

“Make sure all the windows are closed”, Emily said as she slammed the door shut.

I tried to put Melody down but she clung to me with surprising strength.  Knowing that I couldn’t do what I needed to with an eleven-year-old hanging onto me I prised her fingers free as gently as I could.

“Sweetheart, we need to make sure the windows are shut, it’s very important.  Can you go and check the ones in your room? I promise I’ll be just next door”.

She nodded and wiped her nose on her sleeve as she finally let go, eyes still wide and fearful.  “You promise?”

“I promise, go on”.

She turned and hurried into her bedroom as I ran for the kitchen, seeing the small, wide window at the top of the frame open.  I grabbed the handle and pulled it shut, then went back through the lounge and double-checked that the patio doors were closed.  Once that was done I went to check the main bedroom with its ensuite bathroom, but Emily came out of the door before I could get there.

“All done”, she said, “but we need to get out of these clothes, they’re soaked”.

Melody ran out of her bedroom and immediately tried to climb into my arms in a way she hadn’t since she’d been little.  Despite the fact that she seemed unharmed, I could only guess how badly she’d been affected by everything that had happened.

“Melody”, I said gently, “I want you to meet Emily.  She’s a very good friend and without her I wouldn’t have been able to come and find you.  You can trust her”.

Melody looked up at Emily uncertainly, then stuck out a filthy hand.

“Hi, I’m Melody”.

Emily took the hand solemnly and shook it, then grinned.

“You do look like your dad”.

The grin faded as she glanced at me, eyes travelling to my belt.

“Uh, Malc, how long has your detector been like that?”

“What?”  I looked down and saw that the paper in the small hole at the top had gone from yellow to black.  The implications made my skin crawl as if ants were burrowing beneath it.  “Oh shit”.

“Dad!”

“Now’s not the time, Melody.  We need to get changed, quickly.  Have you got clean clothes in your room?”
She shook her head.  “Everything is dirty”.

“Well find some dry ones and get changed into them, go on.  Even your underwear”.

She nodded and went back into her room.  Emily was checking her own detector and I saw that it, too, had a black circle at the top.

“How long since you last checked it?”  She asked.

“I don’t know, just before we came in, I think”.

“I think I did the same.  We need to find some clean clothes, and hope that the rain caused it”.

I nodded.  If the radiation was already in the air then we were done for, but if it had been brought by the rain then we stood a chance.

I led her into Frank and Ruth’s bedroom, then began hunting through the wardrobe for something that might fit.  I pulled out a pair of jeans and a shirt for me, then found a pair of black corduroy trousers and a brown jumper that I thought might fit Emily.

I turned to hand them to her and froze as I saw her standing there, stark naked as she threw her clothes into the corner.

I felt myself blush and tried to pass her the clothes without looking.

“Come on Malc, we don’t have time to be shy”.

I nodded, the image of her naked curves burned into my mind’s eye.  Praying that my body wouldn’t rise to the occasion I stripped my clothes off, then pulled on the jeans so fast I nearly did myself an injury.

Once we were dressed, we looked very much like an old married couple, and I wondered if I looked as strange as Emily did.  Unfortunately for me, I could also clearly see that she wasn’t wearing a bra and suddenly discovered that my new jeans were a little too tight. 

“Why is it”, I said quietly, “that we spent all those nights together and nothing happened, but now we get a radiation shower and suddenly all I want to do is take your clothes back off?”

She stared at me in shock for a second, then began to laugh softly.

“I don’t know”, she said, flashing her dimples, “maybe because you’re bloody awkward?”

I grinned in return.  “There is that, I guess”.

I glanced out of the window and saw that it was still hammering down.

“Maybe take a rain check?”

“Ha bloody ha”.

The door creaked open and Melody came in, wearing slightly less dirty clothes.

She stopped and looked at us with a shrewd expression, then turned to Emily.

“Are you his girlfriend?”

I spluttered and was about to tell her off for asking inappropriate questions, but then stopped myself.  A week ago the question might have been rude, sure, but Melody had lost almost everything and everyone she had ever known. Surely she had a right to know if I was bringing someone else into her life?

Emily and I looked at each other as the question hung between us.  She gestured at me uncertainly, and I shrugged.

“We’re not sure yet”, she said finally, “but we do like each other”.

Melody nodded as if that was the answer she’d been expecting.

“Good, because you’re nice.  Are we going back to Hove?”

Emily blinked at the sudden change of subject, something I was more used to.

“No love, Hove is burning like Manchester, but Emily’s mum and dad live on a beautiful farm in the countryside with chickens and a cow and their own gardens where they grow vegetables, and they’ve said we can go and live with them”.

“Are they nice?”

“Yes, they are.  Ralph pretends to be mean sometimes, but it’s just an act, and Harriet was a nurse for fifty years and she makes really nice food”.

Melody smiled, and the sight almost brought tears to my eyes.  I loved her more than anything else in the world and to see her already beginning to bounce back from what she’d been through was a balm to my wounded soul.

“Good, because I’m hungry”.

“Well it’s a long way to go”, I said, “and we still don’t know how we’re going to get there yet, we don’t have a car anymore”.

Her smile faded as she thought back to the men who had taken it, but then she brightened.

“Why don’t we take grandpops’ car?”

“Er, grandpops doesn’t have a car”.

She nodded, sending pieces of muck flying from her hair.

“Yes he does, it’s in the garage”.

I exchanged a glance with Emily, hardly daring to hope that the answers to our problem could be so close.

“But wouldn’t he have taken it with him when he went looking for mummy?”

“No, he said it would draw the wrong kind of attention.  Shall I show you?”

She walked towards the door but I grabbed her arm.  My heart nearly broke when she shied away from the sudden movement, a stark reminder of her recent captivity.

“Don’t go outside love, not while it’s raining”.

“Why not?”